Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga:23765 comp.sys.amiga.tech:2068
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!chalmers!tekn01.chalmers.se!d88_pata
From: d88_pata@tekn01.chalmers.se (PATRIK PETTERSSON)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Interesting guru using Blink..
Message-ID: <226@tekn01.chalmers.se>
Date: 5 Oct 88 23:31:09 GMT
References: <834@kuling.UUCP>
Organization: Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
Lines: 47

In article <834@kuling.UUCP>, jonasf@kuling.UUCP (Jonas Flygare) writes:
> One of my friends told me the other day he couldn't link a program he
> wrote, because Blink would guru on the object file. I didn't believe him
> so he gave me a copy, and sure enough, my blink (2.7, the one that came 
> with Lattice C, vers 4.0) also gave up on the file.
> All I could make of it was that Blink guru's somewhere in pass two on
> the file. I enclose a shar script with the source, and a uuencoded copy
> of the object file. Source is assembly language, assembler used is
> asm (Lattice 4.0 version).
> I suspect there are some errors in the source, and if you like to pointe 
> them out in email, I'll forward them. (He claims it is his first attempt to
> do serious programming on his Amy.. And he *refuses* to use C.. :-)
> But apart from that, I am ratehr surprised at the guru, I would expect 
> Blink to come up with an error message, and then abort linking..
> Whoever out there makes Blink tick, and run, is this a bug??
> 

This is exactly the same problem I had, some time ago. I were linking several
small assembler-generated objectfiles with Blink, when suddenly it Gurued!
After many, many frustrating hours of testing and reassembling, I finally
saw a pattern. It appeared to have something to do with the length of the
different hunks in the objectfile. I don't recall the exact reason, but I do
remember that it had something to do with alignment. 
Of, course Blink should *never* guru, but this time it is due to bad programming
practice. The key-issue is how your friend declares strings.
He uses the fast-and-ugly method:  dc.b 'Text',0
The proper way to declare strings in assembler on the Amiga is as follows:

	.
	.
	.
		INCLUDE "exec/strings.i"
	.
	.
	.

	.
	.
	Label:	STRING 'The text'
	.
	.

This trick saved my day. Hopefully it will save your friend's too!

	Patrik Pettersson
	Chalmers University Of Technology
	Sweden